1.1 How do I add a lyrics translation?

First of all, you should be logged in to add a translation. Also, when you want to add a translation, it’s very important to use lyrics and artist information which may already exist on the site.

First, use artist search to find a page related to a singer / band who sings the song you’d like to translate.

Have you found the artist you were looking for?

If yes, then you should

a) find song name on the artist’s page

b) follow the link - you’ll see an “Add new translation” button on the song’s page

If there’s no such song in a list, use the “Add new translation” button which is on the artist’s main page. In this case you’ll be asked to add original lyrics text along with its translation.

Can't find the artist you're looking for?

If there’s no such artist in our database, you should

a) use the menu at the top of the page: Menu -> Translations -> "Add new translation" button

b) there fill in artist’s name and additional information about this artist (if you know any - it’ll be useful for others), lyrics text and your translation. After that, an artist’s page with lyrics and translation will be created automatically

b) Second, use request search by request database. May be the translation you look for is already requested by someone else.
If that’s your case, follow the link and press ‘Subscribe’ on the page of this request. You’ll be notified by email when someone adds the translation.

c) Third, if that’s not your case, use artist search by artist database

Have you found the artist who sings the song you’re interested in?

If yes, then find the title of your song on the artist’s page, follow the link, and use ‘Request new translation’ button on the song page. If there’s no such song in a song list, use the ‘Request new translation’ button on the page. In this case you’ll be asked to provide the song lyrics - to make it possible for a translator to read and translate the song.

If there’s no such artist, use the menu at the top of the page: Menu -> Requests -> "Add new request" button. Then you’ll be asked to add artist’s name and additional information about this artist (if you know any - it’ll be useful for others).

If you can’t go through all the previous steps because you don’t know an artist name and / or a song title are incorrectly spelled, first use forum to identify it.

b) there fill in artist’s name and additional information about this artist (if you know any - it’ll be useful for others), along with lyrics text.
After that, an artist’s page with lyrics and translation will be created automatically and will be available through artist search form.

1.4 How do I request a transcription of a song?

Before requesting a transcription of the lyrics for a song, please check we don't already have in the site. The song you look for might have been uploaded with different spelling, listed in a different artist page (specially if the song's a collab or a cover of another song) or uploaded in the forums.

If you can't find the song you're looking for, you should fill in the lyrics transcription form. To reach it, follow the menu at the top of the page -> Requests -> Request lyrics transcription.

Note that most of the fields can be left blank if you're not sure of the artist. The only mandatory fields are a link to a sound or video file, and the language (you may select "Unknown" if you don't know it).

1.5 How do I edit a translation, a song, or an artist?

First of all, you should be logged in to edit information on the site. Then there are two possible situations:

I. You want to edit information submitted by you - it’s a translation you posted, an artist or lyrics added by you.
Then you should go to the content page - it may be a translation page or an artist page or a song text page and there you’ll see an ‘Edit’ button at the top of the page (just below the content header).
Of course, you should be logged in to see this button - double check it.

II. You want to correct information submitted by someone else. Then you may take any (or all) of these steps:

a) Write your corrections in page comments. Thus, a correct information becomes available to all visitors, including page author.

b) Write a private message (PM) with corrections to the page author, so that he’ll be able to correct mistakes by himself.

c) Write a private message (PM) with corrections to someone from a moderating team.

And please, give as much details as possible. I.e. don’t write messages like “That’s wrong!” but tell how is right.

2.2 Can I add a translation done by someone else?

If you're going to add a translation done by someone else, please make sure that the author doesn’t mind about reprinting.
Best practice is to put a link to a translation source and several first lines of a translation text, instead of copying a translation text in full.
Please understand that your submission will be deleted in case of author’s complain.

2.4 How do I use ‘add new translation / request a translation’ forms?

When you’re adding a translation request or a translation itself, you should specify all related information - song artist, song title and lyrics, song original language and (desired) translation language.

Try to use information which already exists on LyricsTranslate.com. For this, use search before using these forms. It will make your task easier, lessening a quantity of information for you to fill in,
and the site database tidier, by avoiding duplicate information.

If you can’t find artist or song in our database, then you’re welcome to use the form, and after that all required pages are created automatically, i.e. artist / song / translation / request pages.

3.1 What are Phrases for?

Phrases database is for storing idiomas, proverbs, slang, abbreviations on various languages and, of course,
their meanings, translated (or not) to other languages. Some words or phrases used in song lyrics are difficult to understand,
that’s why we added phrase databank to the site. Users can add new phrases, meanings (definitions) to existing phrases, request phrase for explanation, etc.
See next Q’s for details.

3.3 How to add new explanation to existing phrase

3.4 How to request an explanation for the phrase

To request explanation for existing phrase, you can use Request explanation button on the phrase page. To find phrase page, use phrase search on the right column, or use advanced search. If you want to know meaning of the phrase, that does not exist in database, use request explanation form

4.1 Точки

At this site works a mechanism of user points. It means that when you post some content, your user account earns points:

20 точки за написване на статия

10 точки за написване на превод

1 точка, за пускане на фраза

2 точки за написване на обяснение на фраза

1 точка за пускане на видео

1 point for posting a song or adding an artist

The more points you get, the higher your user rank becomes, but please note that this mechanism is automatic and thus can consider only content quantity, not quality.
It means that number of earned points shows only one’s activity.

Sometimes site administration can manually add points for some useful deeds, e.g. when a user translates this site interface to another language.

4.2 Роли

Here follows a list of user roles on LyricsTranslate.com:

Novice (0-29 points)

Junior member (30-119 points)

Member (120-449 points)

Senior member (450-899 points)

Translation addict (900+ points)

A user role is automatically assigned to every registered user of LyricsTranslate.com according to number of points (see previous 4.1 Points) earned by this user.
These points are given for the quantity of submitted by this user content. To esteem the quality of user-added translations, visit his profile - there you’ll see ratings of his translations.

If a user reaches "Translation addict" role, he can change his user role to any desired message. This custom role will be shown on any page of his translations in "About translator" block.

User can hide his user role from “About translator” block, shown at the top right on a translation page. To do this, use a top page menu: Menu -> Profile -> User Profile -> “Hide your role from "About translator" block” option.

4.3 Badges

Badges are given by a site administration to translators who have achieved some outstanding results. Nominations may vary, e.g.:

best translator (user owns lots of translations with high visitors ratings)

best voter (user has left lots of adequate visitor ratings for other users’ translations)

best video editor (user has added lots of video clips to own and others’ translations)

etc.

As a rule, a badge for every nomination is given yearly to a narrow circle of translators.

Translator’s badges are shown in an “About translator” block. If you want to hide your badges from this block, use a top page menu: Menu -> User Profile -> “Hide your badges from "About translator" block” option.

4.4 Абонамент

Any registered user can subscribe to some content types, e.g. to a translation request, or to a translation page. You will receive notifications by e-mail in case of any changes on the page,
including appearance of new comments.

4.5 Localization

We'd like to make LyricsTranslate interface available in different languages. Presently we can do it only with help of our visitors - with your help.
If you think you'd like to help - read this interface translation text and go on further :)

4.6 Proofreading

Every translator can mark his translation for proofreading, so that other members can see easily where their help is wanted. "Request proofreading" button can be found on a translation page. Logged in users can search within marked translations.

6.1 Use advanced search

Search form you see in a header of every page of LyricsTranslate.com uses Google search. It’s convenient for a general full-text search through all song texts, comments, forum posts etc., but has some restrictions (inconvenient display of result pages).

Try using advanced search because it allows very fine tuning of your search query.

7.1 Transliterations

Languages in lyrics pages are expected to be written in their native scripts (e.g. Russian parts of a song are expected to be written in Cyrillic alphabet). To help people who cannot read the original scripts, one may rewrite (or copy) the lyrics in a different script (typically, roman letters). This is known as a transliteration.

If you want to upload a transliteration, upload it as if it were a translation to another language, but when asked for a language, select "Transliteration". You may upload more than one transliteration to a single song.

If this was correctly done, links reading "Original" and "Transliteration" will appear above the lyrics, like here. (If there's more than one transliteration, there will be links for "Transliteration 1", "Transliteration 2" ...) Clicking any of the links will change the song lyrics to a different script, instantly and without reloading the page (JavaScript must be enabled in order to do this).

7.3 Constructed, non-standard and extinct languages

Neither songs or translations are required to be in languages currently spoken; we have lyrics and/or translations in constructed languages (like Esperanto, Klingon and Quenya), different dialects (Central German dialects, Turkish dialects, Torlakian dialect...) and exctinct (like Latin and Galician-Portuguese).

8.1 Translations ratings

Every registered user can rate translations, added by other translators. Votes are numbers from 1 to 5, 1 is the lowest, 5 is the highest vote. If you leave vote lower than 5 you are required to leave a comment - to explain why in your opinion the translation isn’t perfect.

Voting is a powerful educational mechanism. With your votes and comments you help others to improve, sharing your knowledge and opinion. And thus the more detailed your comments are, the more useful they are for translators and all interested visitors.

8.2 I can’t see the content I’ve added

There are two possible reasons:

I) Caching. We actively use caching mechanism on our site to improve its performance and increase page loading speed. It may cause delays in a new / changed content publishing.
To check if that’s the case follow these steps:

a) Log in, if you’re not logged in

b) Press Ctrl+R (Cmd+R for Mac users) to reload the page where a content you look for should be published

8.3 Login / register procedure. My profile.

Almost every act on LyricsTranslate.com requires a registration. Unregistered visitors can only read. They can’t add translations or translation requests, can’t vote, can’t comment, can’t subscribe to content etc.

That’s why you should register immediately! :) It’s free and very easy, it won’t take more time than reading of these few lines. We ask only for your valid email, and we don’t share it with any third-party organizations and don’t use it for sending unwanted mail (spam).

It’s even more simple if you’ve already got a Facebook.com account. Then you may use a ‘connect via facebook’ option, and it authorizes you on our site in one click (if you’re already logged in in your FB account).

After registration you may, if you wish, personalize your profile with additional information. You can specify languages you’re interested in, upload your avatar picture, additional contact information etc.
This information will be visible for all site visitors who will come to your profile page.

When you click on "Login / Register" link, you see a login form. If you already have registered LyricsTranslate account, you just fill in there proper information and log in.
Otherwise you may chose "Create new account" link, fill in desired login details, decipher CAPTCHA image - and button "Create new account" takes you to your profile page.

At first, profile page is almost empty. If you follow "Edit" and "Edit user profile" links, you may set your avatar image, change login details and specify your contact information (ICQ, MSN, Skype etc.).
And also there you can specify languages you’re interested in and proficiency - native, fluent-spoken and those you are learning (or would want to learn).
When you set these languages, your profile can be found by people who are also interested in some of these languages: maybe someone is learning language which is native for you - and thus you can easily help someone to improve. Or maybe someone is learning same language with you and want to get an advice from you concerning education issues.

All private information is kept hidden and never is shown openly. Please be careful and don’t use your email address to be your user name - because only in this case it becomes visible to potential spammers and spam-bots.

8.5 Adding footnotes

In order to add footnotes to your text, please use the [fn] [/fn] open/close tags where you want your footnote to appear - in the text itself. Between those two tags you must enter the content text of your footnote, so it will look like this [fn]footnote text content here[/fn]. The numbering will be generated automatically, and you can always edit the text to experiment with these and other tags. Try googling for specific tags or a wider 'tag list' to see what other html tags are available, then you can also experiment with them on your texts here.

You can also use a "value" attribute to a) set the numbering to start from the given value, or b) to set an arbitrary text string as label.Ex:[fn value="5"]This becomes footnote #5. Subsequent are #6, #7...[/fn][fn value="*"]This footnote is assigned the label "*"[/fn]Using value="" you can have multiple references to the same footnote in the text body.[fn value="5"]This becomes footnote #5.[/fn][fn value="5"]This is a reference to the same footnote #5, this text itself is discarded.[/fn]

8.6 Covers

Please refrain from creating songs duplicates. If the song is the cover of another song, the best practice is to add the song to the original artist. You will be able to list all artists who covered the song while adding it to original artists. In such a case, translations would be available for all artists who covered the song.

If covered song lyrics are substantially different, it is allowed to upload this new version of the song. Please add the link to new song to the submitters' comment of the original lyrics, and vice versa.